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triangles she was about to stitch.
    The group sat down around one of the larger tables and settled into their stitching routine. Lauren came a few minutes later and made a point of sitting at a smaller table by the window so she could talk but, at the same time, keep the work she was binding hidden below the tabletop.
    The women spent a few minutes discussing their absent members. Robin McLeod had to take her daughter to the orthodontist. DeAnn Gault had a painter at her house and didn't feel comfortable leaving him there by himself. When they were satisfied they had accounted for everyone, they moved on to what everyone was doing this week. Harriet was not anxious to share her activities. How would she put it?
    I'm going to see my aunt's attorney and undo the havoc she's wrought in my life.
    Or maybe she'd just report on the stuff she was stitching then disappear quietly into the night as soon as Aunt Beth returned and leave them all guessing. That would keep them yakking for weeks, she thought and smiled to herself.
    They had not yet asked Avanell what was happening in her life when the six-foot-three answer walked through the door.

Chapter Seven
    "Hi, Mom,” the young man said, and absently flicked a strand of his chin-length black hair over his ear. Harriet could see the resemblance to Avanell in his angular face, but his eyes were unlike any she had ever seen.
    The color was a pale yellowish-blue that stopped just short of white. They were large, and angled slightly, giving them a feline quality. His dark tan spoke to time spent somewhere much farther south than Foggy Point.
    He came around the table and kissed Avanell then held her at arms-length.
    "You look really good."
    "This hairy young man is my youngest son, Aiden,” Avanell said, and tucked another unruly lock of hair behind his other ear. A slight blush darkened his cheeks. “He's been doing a research project in Uganda for the last three years, where they apparently don't have barber shops."
    "How very nice to meet you,” Lauren said. “We've heard so much about you."
    "All good, I hope,” he said, reminding Harriet of her own reaction to the same pronouncement and making her wonder what he might have to hide. He straightened up and turned toward the table full of women.
    Avanell's oldest son was a few years younger than Harriet and had been a pimple-faced teenager with a crush on her when she'd left for college. Her daughter was a few years younger than that, and Aiden was the proverbial afterthought. He must have been around when Harriet had lived with Aunt Beth, but she was pretty sure she would have remembered those eerie eyes if she'd seen them before. Then again, she had been pretty self-absorbed in those days. Her anger at her parents for once again dumping her with Aunt Beth while they partied their way across Europe under the guise of academic research pretty well eclipsed anything that was happening in Foggy Point.
    "My, how you've grown,” Jenny said. “I can remember you eating Popsicles at my kitchen table with Mark. He's married and has a baby boy, but somehow it didn't occur to me that you'd be growing up, too.” She smiled. “I guess when your mom said you were coming back to town, I expected to see that gangly boy with eyes too big for his face. Funny how your mind works when you get old and senile."
    "You're not old,” Aiden said. “And even though I've grown up, I really missed your Popsicles while I was in Africa. We had a small refrigerator run from a generator, but we had to stuff it full of animal medications."
    "Aiden is a veterinarian,” Avanell explained. “He just took a job at the clinic on Main Street."
    "Welcome home, mijo ,” Connie said and stood up to give him a hug. Even when she stretched to her full height, Aiden had to bend down to receive her greeting.
    Connie claimed she was five feet tall, but no one believed her. She had been the favorite first grade teacher of everyone who had passed through the doors of